Tiny Dancer

My baby is a dancer.

This is something we've always known. Put on anything with even the vaguest semblance of a beat and she's off. Rock, country, showtunes, whatever.... if it has a beat, she's got the moves to match.

It doesn't even have to be music. Mid way through the rinse cycle, our washing machine has a tendency to rock out of it's own accord and everytime, without fail, the snot queen will stop what she's doing and rock out with it.

So imagine her delight when we took her to her first wedding this weekend.

"Ecstatic Bliss" does not begin to describe the joy that emanated from her tiny body as the band began to play and hundreds of people took to the floor to dance.

How, in all her 20 months of life on this earth, had such an extraordinary phenomenon as this existed without her knowledge? How long had people been meeting up to shimmy and shake and make such a joyous sound? And WHY oh WHY had we, her parents, kept her from them?

Well, she more then made up for lost time on Saturday night. From the moment her miniature mary janes hit the floor, she was off. She boogied with the best of them and screamed in protest if we so much as hinted at taking a break.

There was no end of suitors willing to partner her. Family, friends and complete strangers, she was anyone's for a song.

She even seemed to have an inborn knowledge of dancehall etiquette, turning to applaud the band at the end of each number. The seeds of a true groupie were sown as she lay prostrate on the floor in front of the stage making eyes at the lead singer.

At eleven o'clock, long past the hour she should have been in bed, we finally bundled up the little diva and took her home where she spent the next 12 hours in a dance induced coma.

And if there was any worry about her taste of the bright lights spoiling her for the simple pleasures of home, it was wiped away this morning as the rinse cycle started and her hips began to sway...